It is often true of history that the farther away from events we get, the better we are able to understand them. In the years since the Third Reich, for example, we have come to understand that a fundamental reason that Hitler was able to grab and maintain power in Germany in the 1930s, and, later, to slaughter 6 million Jews from all over Europe, was that a great many people looked the other way.

But as for understanding the man himself, it is likely that as long as human history survives, we will never know how such titanic evil could exist in one person. The very idea of "making him human" seems a horrific conflict of terms, yet if it is at least possible to put a credible face on evil, Robert Carlyle ("The Full Monty") does so in "Hitler: The Rise of Evil," an often exceptional four-hour miniseries to be broadcast on CBS Sunday and Tuesday nights.

Perhaps in part because the psychological root of Hitler's warped personality remains so much beyond anyone's understanding, his early years are only sketched in, and the script settles for easy answers: He adored his mother, who died when he was just a child; his father beat him; he wanted to be an artist but was told he had no talent; he was impotent with women whom he idolized, much as he idolized the memory of his loving mother. In the film, his mother (Stockard Channing) dies before the opening credits end, which shows how little attention is paid to Hitler's youth.

What we do know is that he hates the world and Jews in particular. By the time he joins the German army during World War I, he is already blaming the Jews for all of Germany's problems and, although he's not yet a German citizen,

advocates a postwar German nation controlled by and for pure Germans. At this point in his life, and for several years to come, Hitler is dismissed as a creepy loner and a crackpot. Few take him seriously, and the more he is dismissed, the deeper his rage becomes.

Carlyle is flat-out brilliant in portraying both Hitler's extreme insecurity and his obsessive determination to overcome it. As he rises in the ranks of the German Workers Party, he secretly practices those chilling, robotic arm gestures we've seen in so many newsreels of Hitler's speeches. His relationships with women are perverse. Lusting after his young niece, Geli (Jena Malone), he is incapable of following through on his feelings, and, instead, makes her a virtual prisoner. There's a chilling and extraordinary scene of metaphorical rape in which Carlyle forces the young girl to walk around and around him in circles in the middle of a field in the dead of winter. Nothing else happens; he never touches her, but the girl has been horrifically violated.

The other woman in his life is Helene (Julianna Margulies), the German American wife of Ernst Hanfstangl (Liev Schreiber), a publisher who is at first swept up by Hitler's nationalistic rhetoric, only to realize later that the man is insane. By that point, however, Helene, who initially found Hitler repugnant, has become one of his chief allies. Helene, broken and embittered by the death of her daughter, is representative of the German people, whose postwar bitterness made them vulnerable to Hitler's insane rantings.

Director Christian Duguay and screenwriters John Pielmeier and G. Ross Parker use Ernst and Helene to demonstrate both how Hitler was able to sway otherwise intelligent people into buying his insane politics and how a certain enforced ignorance by others enabled his rise to power. So many people could have stopped him along the way, from military allies, to disgruntled fellow party members, to President von Hindenburg (Peter O'Toole in a crunchy, scene- stealing cameo), who made an accommodating political deal with Hitler to save his own fragile hold on power.

Although the dialogue often sinks to cliche, Duguay is able to lift it to credibility, for the most part. He often intercuts scenes from a German cabaret with Hitler's early speeches to an ever-increasing party membership, for example. At the moment when the wife of composer Friedrich Hollander finishes a cabaret number mocking the Nazis, the camera switches seamlessly to an applauding audience -- not at the cabaret, but at the German beer hall where Hitler has just finished a speech. Yes, Duguay has seen Fosse's "Cabaret, " but if you're going to steal, steal from the best.

There were some Germans, of course, who knew better, such as journalist Fritz Gerlich, but, unfortunately, he is portrayed by Matthew Modine, a nice- looking guy who is too callow and gosh-darn noble for the role. True, the character is supposed to be heroic, but Modine doesn't show himself capable of finding any depth and nuance beneath the white armor.

But good as the other cast members are, it's Carlyle who holds our unrelenting focus: Revolted as we inevitably must be by Hitler, Carlyle forces us to pay attention every second he is onscreen and to remain aware of his dominating presence even when he is not. With eyes both lifeless and mad, spittle forming on his mouth when he winds himself up to a frenzy in his speeches, and holding his body at rigid attention, Carlyle delivers the goods.